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Life

Bishop Asti was born in Durres, Albania in 1974, into an Orthodox family that kept their faith even in the most difficult times of the rule of the atheist government of Albania. After the fall of the atheist government in the early 1990s, Asti was baptized immediately from the first moments of the rebuilding of the Church in Albania and began contributing to its revitalization with the Orthodox youth. During his first ten years, he studied under a scholarship awarded by the Archdiocese of Albania, first at the Resurrection of Christ Theological Academy at St. Vlasius (St. Vlash) Monastery in Durres. Then, he continued his postgraduate studies at the Theological School of Aristotle University in Thessalonica, Greece.

After choosing to devote his life fully to the Church as an unmarried clergyman, he was ordained a deacon in 2003. In 2006, he was raised to the dignity of an archdeacon and, in 2009, he was ordained a priest and raised to the rank of archimandrite. During these nineteen years of dedicated service to the Church, he served as a catechist, a professor at the Theological Academy at St. Vlash Monastery, a collaborator in the Orthodox Student Center in Tirana, Albania and in the administration of the media of the Church at the archdiocese in Tirana.
On January 19, 2012, he was elected by the Holy Synod of the Church of Albania as Bishop of Bylisi.